582 babies with malfunctions have been born in Bashkiria in 2009

author: Galya Nabieva, Ludmila Kashapova

More than 10 thousand women deal with chemical preparations, including those with the carcinogenic hazard, in Bashkiria. This information was ventilated at the work conference “The interaction between the Russian Agency for Health and Consumer Rights in RB and the Ministry of health protection RB when monitoring the inborn children’s malfunctions”. And this is just the official statistics.

Women make up more than 20% of all chronic alcoholics in the Republic. The frequency of pregnant women’s diseases makes up 1,9 times on average during carrying of pregnancy. These factors adversely affect the future generations, since the children’s health depends upon great number of various constituents, including ecology, pernicious parents’ habits, their inheritance, age and state of health.

According to the data of the Ministry of health protection RB the number of the newly born babies with the malfunctions has increased in Bashkiria by 55% within the period between the years 2000 and 2009. The highest growth is registered in the town of Durtuli (20 times), in Ilishevsky, Mechetlinsky regions (15 times) and in the town of Blagoveshensk (ten times).

“It is absolutely necessary to investigate these regions in order to understand why it happens so” – the acting head of the Russian Agency for Health and Consumer Rights in Bashkiria Nina Kondrova underscored in her speech – “And if there is certain regularity in all these cases, we have to struggle with it. We have to work up and introduce special goal-oriented programs on the territories with the high risk of the children’s malfunctions”.

387 children at the age less than one year have died in the Republic in 2009, i.e. 7 children per 1000, born alive. Since 2005 the infant death rate in Bashkiria is steadily coming down. For four years it has reduced by 41,6%. But it isn’t the ground for complacency because the infant death rate in Bashkortostan is almost two times higher than in Europe and still higher than in Russia in a whole. The specialists say ecology can be one of the circumstantial reasons. For the last two years the atmospheric air in Salavat, Sterlitamac, Ufa, Kumertau and Tuimazy substantially became worse. One of the measures one has to undertake immediately is lowering of the concentration of the toxic substances in production sphere and improvement of the ecological situation in the region. Summing up the discussion Nina Kondrova has suggested that these meetings should be converted to another level – from the interdepartmental to the all-Republican one in order the Government RB would learn the childhood’s problems at first hand.